Ace of Swords
by penknife1
Summary: Will, Elizabeth, and swords. Set shortly before DMC.


Will has loved swords since he was thirteen and first held a naked sword in his hands, feeling all the things he would only have words for later, the weight and the balance and the reach. It felt like what knives wanted to be when they grew up. This was what all this was _for_, he thought, and looked down almost reverently at the blisters on his hands from pumping the bellows. If old Brown was nothing like a father, he was going to make Will into a man who could make things like that, and Will found he could love him a little for it.

He's done most of the making of himself, as it turns out, but he doesn't hold a grudge about that. He's had a better start than he had any right to expect as a masterless and penniless boy of twelve. If it quickly became clear that the only reason Brown was willing to take on an apprentice without a fee was because no one's father would hand over a penny to the silly old sot, Will was sensible enough to keep quiet and take the old man in hand as much as he could. He knew well enough how to cook plain food and sweep and wash out his own clothes in cold water, all learned in the long months of his mother's dying.

He's learned all sorts of other useful lessons along the way; how to write a fairer hand than the straggling letters he learned out of copy-books as a child, how to do tidy sums and keep track of orders and deliveries, how to gentle an angry horse and coax along a drunkard without bruising his pride. And he's learned to make swords. Ironwork of all sorts, of course, this isn't a fine bladesmith's shop in London and they can't pick and choose, but there are plenty of people who want swords.

He's been thinking about a sword for Elizabeth, turning the shape of it around in his mind. She's got a decent reach, but she needs a lighter blade; she'll get farther with speed than strength. Of course he shouldn't give it to her; he should be all the protection she needs. But he's seen the way her eyes darken when she talks of being woken from her bed and taken aboard the _Pearl_, and the way her face lights up with the blade in her hand. If the world has taught her she needs a sword in hand to avoid being someone's plaything, he's not about to argue.

He likes the feel of a sword in his own hands, although he's not sure now who the imagined enemy at the other end of the blade is when he works his way steadily through drills in the cool of the evening after the shop is shuttered and the fire banked for the night. It might still be a pirate; he's imagined more than once running Barbossa through, hoping for an end to the memory of his mocking laughter and Elizabeth's screams.

He finds himself thinking too often of that first swordfight with Jack instead, the first time he ever drew a sword in deadly earnest. He's always loved the dance of blades, but he's heard enough grim tales of war not to expect to enjoy it. And yet he did enjoy it. He draws and whirls on an imaginary enemy. The shop is quiet, no sound but the rattling of the shutters thrown open to bear away the day's heat on the breeze.

Will puts the sword down and goes to the window. The street is quiet tonight, as it should be. There's nothing to make him nervous but the thing he most anticipates. He smoothes a hand over his hair as if Elizabeth could see him now. His borrowed wedding clothes are safe in the trunk in his room, laid out crisp and clean where the ash from the forge will not touch them.

He can't quite bring himself to think beyond that. Elizabeth's father has said carefully tactful things about a dowry and a good start in life, and Will has been carefully appreciative. It will mean an anvil and a forge and a shop, and new clothes in some compromise between what's appropriate to his station and what's appropriate for Government House, and a bit to put by while he discovers if there's enough custom to support two blacksmiths in Port Royal. He's got to look after the old man as well, and see that in the absence of someone to do half his work for him he doesn't starve. Maybe Brown needs a new apprentice.

It's not quite the life of adventure on the high seas that he dreamed of as a child, but he found out at twelve that adventure on the high seas was only another kind of hard work for pennies and enough food to keep from starving. He came to the colonies looking for his father's place and name, and instead he's making one for himself. It's more than a man has any right to expect.

Elizabeth is more than any man has a right to expect. He still catches his breath whenever her fingers brush his over the hilt of a sword or her hair brushes against his wrist. At night he lies awake trying to imagine lying tangled with her in their marriage bed, his face against her warm skin and her strong hands under his shirt, the shape of something not yet made real.

If the bright light in her eyes is sometimes very much like the light off a sharpened blade, that doesn't make him love her any less. He has always loved swords. Sometimes when he practices now it's her he imagines, matching his movements like a dance, his blade thrusting for her heart. He can never see it striking, though. She always fades like smoke on the wind.

Will turns from the window and back to real concerns. He has nearly finished making his tools, and will manage somehow to let Brown present them to him without a hint of irony in his thanks. If he's going to buy or build a shop, he'll have to find one that can be bought or a place one can be built. He should probably get a better grasp of the wedding plans, although he suspects any comment on them from him will be appreciated by no one.

There will be no pirates in attendance. The rising moon shining in through the window illuminates nothing but the racks of tools and blades, all in there proper place waiting for their proper uses. Will can't help standing by the window a minute longer, listening for the sound of distant thunder.


End file.
